Monthly Archives: December 2012

Well, It’s Not The Apocalypse…

But it could mean the end of John Boehner’s Speaker gig.  That is, it would normally mean the end of Boehner’s rein as Speaker if the House Republicans weren’t so crazy.  How crazy are they?  This crazy.

Boehner brings up for a vote a proposal that keeps taxes at the levels they are now for anyone making under one million dollars a year; 99% of the population.  Then he quickly has to pull it back because he doesn’t have enough support in his own party to pass it.

House Republicans basically rejected a proposal to keep taxes exactly the same on 321 million Americans.  What’s laughable about this is it was really more of a symbolic vote more than anything serious.  The proposal had a zero percent chance of passing the Senate.  This was Boehner’s gambit to say to America, “See? Look how we’re attempting to work with Democrats and how unreasonable they’re being!”  And it failed miserably.

In any other political system in the world, this would mean the end of Boehner’s leadership position.  Republicans, however, will probably stick with him, though, because no one else is stupid enough to take the post.  There will eventually be a bill that contains tax increases for high income families.  That bill will pass.  No one wants to be Speaker when that happens.

Not that I consider myself an expert on political processes or internal party dynamics, but I pay attention much more than your average human and this stuff is absolutely crazy.  We have had the Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate trying maneuvers to make Democrats look bad and both have failed miserably.  One by his own misreading of the situation and the other by his own party.

There is only one word to describe the Republican party right now and that is shambles.  That’s normally a word used exclusively for Democrats.  Let’s see if the Democrats can take advantage of it.

Who Wants To Reduce Gun Homicides?

Do you want to reduce gun homicides?  Sure, we all do!  There are some really easy steps we can make to accomplish this.

First and foremost among these steps would be to repeal drug laws.

Oh, you mean THOSE gun homicides!  Those mostly affect people who are not nearly as white as me.  Can we get back to talking about preventing white people from getting killed by guns?

Dripping sarcasm aside, repealing drug laws and regulating and taxing their sale would solve a whole lot of our social ills.  Not only will it likely drastically lower the homicide rate, it will also raise governmental income while reducing incredibly costly governmental spending on drug interdiction.

I don’t mean to make this sound like a panacea for all our problems.  Drug addiction is a serious issue.  Repealing some drug laws will likely lead to an immediate increase in drug addiction cases in the short term.  But if that is the price we pay for saving lives, it seems worth it for me.

Using drugs is an individual choice. (I don’t actually believe this in most cases, but it’s a belief popularly held by most people.)  The taking of a life is an act that removes individual choice.  By repealing drug laws we would be reducing the instances of forced removal of choice by increasing the freedom of choice.

The Most Gorgeous Space Picture of 2012

Given that Saturn is farther from the sun than us, we don’t really get the opportunity to see what it looks like from the other side.  You know, with the sun in the background?  Unless, that is, we happen to send a spacecraft to Saturn.  Then you get pictures like this.  You want to click that link.  Then you want to click to get the large version of the picture.  Yowza!

Being able to get breathtakingly gorgeous pictures from spacecraft is a valuable side benefit to space exploration.  It humanizes the experience in ways that hard scientific study can’t.  But hard scientific study is the real mission of all those crafts we shoot up into the heavens.  Every time you look at one of these pictures, you should be reminded of it.  Pictures of the universe are being beamed back to Earth from hundreds of thousands of miles away but it’s only a microcosm of the information that these vehicles are relaying.  The rest is simply data to help us figure out how the universe works.  You know, science.  And it’s in danger of being drastically cut.  More the shame to us if we allow that to happen.

Book Review: Reamde

Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Neal Stephenson’s “Reamde” is a globe spanning adventure filled with fascinating characters and gobs of general mayhem.  If you like Stephenson’s other books, you are sure to enjoy this one as well.  It contains MMORPGs, Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers, global jihadists, MI6 agents, CIA operatives, and the highly eclectic Forthrast family.  It is intended for immature audiences.

Continue reading →

Pickup Lines That Would Never Work

“How about we go back to my place and I help you prevent breast cancer?”

Courtesy of a new study that claims that squeezing breasts can help prevent breast cancer.  I find this study suspicious, but I don’t care if it ends up being debunked, I’m still going to use it.

The Matryoshka Doll Fantasy

One of the big arguments against taking guns away from individuals is that we need them just in case the big bad federal government comes to take away our rights.  This is a grown men playing Dungeons and Dragons fantasy, but it’s worth addressing in greater detail.

If you truly believe that the federal government may eventually come to take away your rights, the only logical solution is a well organized, well trained, well regulated state militia.

If you truly believe that the state may eventually come to take away your rights and the federal government won’t stick up for you, the only logical solution is a well organized, well trained, well regulated county militia.

If you truly believe that the county may eventually come to take away your rights and the state won’t stick up for you, the only logical solution is a well organized, well trained, well regulated town militia.

If you truly believe that the town may eventually come to take away your rights and the county won’t stick up for you, the only logical solution is a well organized, well trained, well regulated neighborhood militia.

If you truly believe that the neighborhood may eventually come to take away your rights and the town won’t stick up for you, the only logical solution is a well organized, well trained, well regulated household.
If you truly believe that your household may eventually come to take away your rights and the neighborhood won’t stick up for you, the only logical solution is a well organized, well trained, well regulated individual.

Here you are, the smallest matryoshka doll alone with all your guns.

In this fantasy world where someone is coming to take away your rights, at some point, you have to trust someone or you are going to have your rights taken away.  If you don’t trust your household to protect you, you should probably move to a different house.  If you don’t trust your neighborhood to protect you, you should probably move to a different neighborhood.  If you don’t trust your town to protect you, you should probably move to another town.  If you don’t trust your county to protect you, you should probably move to another county.  If you don’t trust your state to protect you, you should probably move to a different state.  If you don’t trust your country to protect you, you should probably move to a different planet.  Because if any bigger matryoshka doll decides to take away your rights, there is a zero percent chance of you keeping those rights.

6,500 A Year

These are the wages of war.  No, that’s not the number of soldiers killed in battle.  That is 293 for 2012.  No, that’s not civilian deaths.  That’s around 50 for 2012.  Though the U.S. has conveniently classified pretty much every male death as non-civilian.  That 6,500 number is the number of suicide attempts every year by U.S. veterans.  18 a day.

We have failed our soldiers so completely.  Words fail.  When words fail, I swear.  Fuck you, George W. Bush for the unnecessary wars you got us into.  Fuck you, Dick Cheney for your endless cheerleading into war.  Fuck you, Donald Rumsfeld and your whole flock of chicken hawks that pushed the wars.  Fuck you, all you congressmen who voted for war.  Fuck you, Barack Obama for not ending the wars sooner.  And a final fuck you to every single politician who has sat idly by for years without doing anything to address the suicide attempts that are occurring every 90 seconds.

Yes, wars are sometimes necessary, but there is a subset of U.S. culture that thinks war is one of the first choices instead of the last choice.  And those people are in power.  And we put them there.  So fuck all of us, too.

The Unhinged Ramblings Of A Syphilitic Mind

Imagine there was a mass shooting in which scores of 6 and 7 year olds were killed.  Imagine the country reeling from such a tragedy and coming to terms with what it all means.  Imagine grasping for answers to try to prevent such a tragedy from occurring in the future.

What solutions would you come up with?  Would you want to ban assault weapons?  Would you want to improve our mental health capabilities?  Would you suggest that 6 year olds should all run and hug any mass murder assailant that happens to walk into school?

Wait, what was that last one again?  Yes, Megan McArdle is back to bring her special brand of stupid.  She wants to train children to charge at the assailants instead of hiding.  Think of how many less children would have died if they all ran straight at him instead of him having to actually seek them out!

That would be a great premise for a horror movie, though.  A bunch of six year olds who hug their victims to death!  Kind of Village of the Damned meets Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

If you ever use Megan McArdle to support your argument, you lose.  She’s like a stopped clock that happens to be right twice a day.

This Is My 100th Post

100 posts and 104 unique visitors all in about a month of blogging.  I’ve had visitors from India, Sweden, Japan, Australia, Greece, South Africa, England, Germany, and Latvia.  You know you’ve made it when you’ve got Latvia.

I think it’s time to think about the future of the blog a bit.  Lots of little improvements need to be made.  I’d like to get a banner graphic and perhaps a background image.  For all you regular readers out there, if you read something that you actually enjoy, please consider sharing it with your friends.  I’m interested in getting actual conversations going on some of the things that I talk about.  Maybe I can make this a side job that actually makes some money.  Yeah, that’s right, one month in and I’m already having delusions of grandeur.

That is all.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled banal blog posts.

Paranoia Runs Deep

Continuing with my “Grown Men Playing Dungeons and Dragons” theme, there is another strange psychology at play here in the United States.  That is the belief of just about every group, no matter how large, that they are an oppressed minority.

Many Christians think they are an oppressed minority.  Here’s future Senator of South Carolina Tim Scott talking about how Christians are the most oppressed group in the country:

 

I have news for you, Christians who think you are being oppressed, being prevented from pushing your views onto others through government is not oppression.  Yes, you’ve gotten away with it for many years without much blowback.  That’s normal when a vast majority controls just about everything.  What you’re seeing is not you being oppressed.  It’s minorities finally sticking up for their rights to not be bullied through government.  You are simply finally not being allowed to get away with things that have been always been unconstitutional.  You still control every branch of government in every state.  You still outnumber every other religious denomination by a very large margin.  So quit acting like the spoiled kid that always got his way until someone finally confronted him about his behavior.

The next vastly oppressed minority is men.  That’s right, men.  Who are we being oppressed by?  Women, apparently.  Not just any women, though.  Feminists!  I won’t link to any of the websites, but look up Men’s Rights Activists if you’re interested in mucking through some real slime.  Seriously, it’s some of the most vile crap you will find on the interwebs.  On the plus side, their web sites make for great logical fallacy bingo games.

Another incredibly oppressed minority in the United States is white men.  I know this because Mitt Romney lost the presidential election:

 

Poor white men.  They only control 82% of the Senate and a similar amount in the House while only representing 33% of the population.  It’s so difficult to be a white male these days!

All of the above scenarios are really about not recognizing privilege.  Christians have it.  Males are up to their heads in it.  White males are swimming in an ocean of it.  The oppression these groups feel is merely their privilege taken away from them.  Slowly, but surely, the level of privilege in this country is being evened.  We have a long way to go, but like the wind eroding a mountain, our progress can not be stopped.